My wife loves to keep bags from the grocery store. Why does she love to keep bags from the grocery store? Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better if you haven’t been drinking tequila all afternoon like I have.

My son walks into the kitchen . . .

He says, “We’ve got enough bags here to open our own store.”

“Good idea!” I reply. “You know what we’re going to sell? All the crap laying around in your room.”

“For a second,” he says, “I thought you said ‘crack.’”

“Crack . . . hey, that’s a good idea too! Ordinarily, you want to buy crack, you’ve got to go hang out on a street corner in some undesirable location. We’ll bring upscale ambiance to the crack business. ‘Paper or plastic?’ Who would suspect you’re toting crack around in that Trader Joe’s bag?”

I’m waiting in line at Trader Joe’s while the checkout guy engages the woman in front of me in a conversation about her groceries, her occupation, where she went to school . . . it’s not even a particularly long conversation in terms of elapsed time . . . the guy just talks so fast that he’s able to cover a lot of ground.

Personally, I don’t like conversing with service personnel unless they’re attractive women, and even then I don’t like it that much.

OK, my turn. The first item out of the basket is a package of dog chews.

“What kind of dog do you have,” the guy asks.

I decide to try a little verbal jiu jitsu and say “We don’t have a dog. You ever try those things? They’re really good.”

It doesn’t even slow him down.

“Do they clean your teeth?” he asks. “I bet they do. We’ve got ‘em in mint flavor, you know . . .”